DU online admission picks up steam
64000 forms filled on Internet

Students fill up application forms on the Delhi University campus. Picture by Yasir Iqbal

New Delhi, June 3: After initial glitches, the online application system of Delhi University appeared to be picking up on Day II of registration.

Authorities said over 60,000 students took the online route to apply for various subjects in the prestigious varsity.

“In two days, we have received or sold about 1.25 lakh forms, 64,000 of which were successfully submitted online. It is unprecedented. There were complaints yesterday about the website crashing but with four servers being used now, it has worked fine today. Compared to last year, the number of applications is about 30,000 more for the first two days, which indicates that even more students are going to vie for the seats this time,” said Malay Neerav, deputy dean (students’ welfare), DU.

On the opening day of registration, the sale of application forms had registered a slight dip compared to last year though hundreds of students and their guardians flocked the 18 centres of the varsity where forms are being sold. Sources said this might have happened because many a student wanted to fill forms online but could not do so because the website crashed for the better part of the day.

This year, Delhi University has prohibited colleges from imposing any extra eligibility criteria on students. “A student applying in five different colleges will have the same criteria for admission in all of them. Colleges can no more impose any extra-eligibility criteria for students. Rules will be the same for all,” Neerav said.

Also, the option of choosing colleges in the form, which was done away with last year, has been reinstated. Cut-off marks across colleges therefore are expected to rise.

Last year, when the four-year undergraduate programme was introduced, the admission forms allowed the students only the option to choose the course they wanted to study.

In a significant departure this year, students who had taken up one or more vocational subjects in Class XII are being given the option to add board exam marks of these subjects to their best-of-four score — required for admission to various colleges.

However, the students will face a deduction of 10 per cent of the maximum marks from their score in each of the vocational subjects included in the best-of-four.

The university has further laid down that if a student who has not studied a particular subject in Class XII but wants to study it at the undergraduate level would have to bear a two per cent deduction from the best-of-four total.

However, the Delhi University authorities have advised students to fill the actual marks obtained by them in their board exams. The job of deducting or adding marks would be done by the college authorities.